“All I saw were flaws- the spots on my chin, the hint of baby fat around the jaw, the way my unruly flyaway hair wisped out from the elastic band. "Look," he said. "The reason it's not coming together is because you're drawing the features, not the person. You're more than a collection of frown lines and doubts. The person I see when I look at you..." He stopped and I waited, feeling his eyes on me, trying not to squirm beneath the intensity of his gaze. "I see someone brave," he said at last. "I see someone who's trying very hard. I see someone who's nervous, but stronger than she knows. I see someone who's worried but doesn't need to be." "Draw that." " Draw the person I see.” CourageInsecuritySelf ImageStrength Of Spirit Book:The Lying Game Source: The Lying Game
“STOP DIGGING.' The letters on the mirror were etched in my memory. Now, as I finished my make-up with a swipe of lip-gloss, I huffed on the mirror, and wrote in the steam obscuring my reflection one word: 'NO'.” CourageStrengthHeroismDeterminism Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“I stop, thinking of Topher and his cushioned, monied existence--the way he has had everything handed to him on a plate, the way he's never had to scrap for anything, never had to swallow a snub from a boss, or pick up a stranger's dirty underwear, or do any of the myriad demeaning, boring jobs the rest of us take for granted. They are arrogant, that's what I realize--maybe not Liz and Carl quite so much, but all of them to some degree. They are protected by the magic of their shares and their status and their IP. They think that life can't touch them--just like I used to do. Only now it has. Now life has them by the throat. And it won't let go.” WealthPrivilegeEntitlement Book:One by One Source: One by One
“I don’t know what woke me up–only that I shot into consciousness as if someone had stabbed me in the heart with a syringe of adrenaline” FearTerrorAdrenaline Rush Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control - but they were looking in the wrong place. When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.” DestinyFateSuperstitionTarotDivination Author:Ruth Ware
“Was this what it was going to be like? Was I turning into someone who had panic attacks about walking home from the tube or staying the night alone in the house without their boyfriend? No, fuck that. I would not be that person.” StrengthConfidenceEmpowermentWomens Rights Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“My mum used to call me Tigger,’ she said. ‘She used to say, you’re like Tigger, you are, no matter how hard you fall, you always bounce back.” Winnie The PoohTiggerResiliance Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“If I shut my eyes, I could picture him... The thought gave me a kind of peace, the idea that he could be out there somewhere-just beyond my reach. But it was a dishonest peace, and I knew that as much as I could fool myself if I tried hard enough, all I was doing was pushing the pain further down the line until the moment I stopped pretending and let the agony wash back over me.” Grief Book:Zero Days Source: Zero Days
“But his grief, the gaping hole left after my mother died- it's too close to my own. Seeing his grief, year after year, it only magnifies my own. My Mother was the glue that held us all together. Now, with her missing, there are only people in pain, unable to heal each other.” DeathLossGrief Book:The Lying Game Source: The Lying Game
“Here, in this house the ghosts of our past are real” PastHouseGhostsReminderHaunt Book:The Lying Game Source: The Lying Game
“Everything was white. The pale wood floor. The white velvet sofa. The long raw-silk curtains. The flawless walls. It was spectacularly impractical for a public vessel–deliberately so, I had to assume.” IronyColor White Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“What,’ I demanded, ‘you don't believe me? You don't think people can be sucked into doing something out of fear, or inability to see any other way out?” Hopeless SituationFearful Thinking Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“I would never sleep. I knew that. Not with my blood ringing in my ears, and my heart beating an angry staccato rhythm in my chest. I would never relax.” FearSleeplessnessUneasinessAnxiousness Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“I switched the light out and drew the cover across myself, but I didn't sleep. Instead I lay on my side watching the sea, rising and falling in strange, hypnotic silence outside the thick, storm-proof panes. And I thought, there is a murderer on this boat. And no one knows but me.” FearSleeplessnessUneasinessAnxiousness Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“But I did feel violated. My little flat felt ruined–soiled and unsafe. Even describing it to the police had felt like an ordeal…” ViolationBurglaryPolice Reports Book:The Woman in Cabin 10 Source: The Woman in Cabin 10
“I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in knocking on wood, or crossing fingers, or crystal gazing, or any of that. I don't think the cards have any special occult power, though I'm not sure I'd say that outright to a client. But they do ...' She found herself struggling to articulate something she rarely dissected, event o herself. 'They do still have meaning - even if you know nothing about tarot, you can see the richness of the symbolism and the imagery. The ideas they represent ... they're universal forces that bear on all our lives. I suppose what I believe is not that the cards can tell you anything you don't already know, or that they have magical answers to your questions, but that they give you ... they give you the space to question ...? Does that make sense? Whether the statements I make in a reading are true or false, they give the sitter an opportunity to reflect on those forces, to analyze their instincts. I don't know if I'm explaining this right.” IntuitionTarotDivinationCartomancyNon Rational Book:The Death of Mrs. Westaway Source: The Death of Mrs. Westaway